


Give Me Something To Believe In

by soulfire003



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misery, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-16 16:23:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2276463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulfire003/pseuds/soulfire003
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a sad little story about life at the bottom of the food chain. Some find pleasure and purpose in it all, seeing the gold for the gunk, while others struggle just to make it to the next morning, but in the end, everyone just wants to be happy. Not everyone can find it, but it's hard to find something while searching with closed eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Pit Stop

**Author's Note:**

> This started, like many things, with an idea. And a nameless character. I had no actual vision for this fic at first, I just had a person in mind who thought he had nothing and felt so helpless in his own world that it consumed him. And then I decided to explore him, his surroundings, the people around him, and I tried to make that as realistic as possible for what it was to try and give him a light at the end of the darkness.
> 
> It hasn't been beta'd. It's set at a slightly AU-ish point in the MTMTE series after the Lost Light returns just in time for Megatron's trial. No real threat of spoilers since this takes place well outside of the realm of what happens to the main characters in the comics. The characters themselves are all likely going to be OC's, since I didn't want to peg this on anyone in particular in canon, but if you turn your head and squint, they really could be anyone.
> 
> In the end, this is a dedication to everyone who thinks they're at the end of the line with no way out. You're not alone. Please, never think that you're alone. Just call. We're here.

Not many knew the true origins of Swerve’s bar, but it was a subject mused upon by several. It had been on the _Lost Light_ all along, some said, just waiting for the right mech to come along and revive it. Others believed the owner himself had been just crazy enough about wanting a bar to make it out of anything. Others still thought no, Swerve couldn’t possibly be that smart. Have you heard the stories about him? Clearly that place was just a lucky hand off to a somewhat-fortunate mech who’d managed to rise to the challenge. But really, how hard could it be to maintain a bar? Sure, there was the occasional rowdy, overcharged mech, but since there were always higher ups to ensure nothing too terrible happened, what could go wrong?

Either way it’d happened, for weeks after the _Lost Light’s_ return, rumors spread like wildfire that kept stoking itself through the _Lost Light's_ crew and those who weren’t part of the crew who had been lucky enough to meet with those famous few and hear what all had to be told. And there was _much_ to be told. Envy ran rampant, then filtered out into excitement, which finally took a turn into actual motion when someone got the bright idea to set up something similar in a part of the city that wasn’t still too horribly disfigured to harbor daily life. Not only did the people support it, a handful of them even went all out into making it a success, and what a success it was.

That was how The Pit Stop was born, and right from the start, it hit the ground, firing on all pistons and a few it didn’t even know it had. The makeshift fledgling government that had taken up residence since the return of the Autobots and Decepticons took notice, but hadn’t even bothered trying to micromanage it. They were smart enough to realize, after everything that had happened over the past few months alone let alone the past several million years, that mechs under strain needed something to take off the edge, and the atmosphere in the city’s newest addition provided just that.

It was an open house sort of place. Its owner, a heavy set but kindly old neutral by the name of Rotor, made sure that everyone who wanted to enjoy themselves within those four walls could without fear of retaliation or harassment, and that included those with or without a badge. That much had taken a little getting used to, but so long as everyone was left to themselves or to their chosen company and a tall glass of energon, troubles stayed on the low and good feelings stayed on the high. It was, for many who wished they could bask in the company of those who frequented Swerve’s place and for others who just wanted to feel okay about the way of things again, a vast improvement over the lives they’d known, boring and dull and worrisome by comparison to the shining light that was The Pit Stop.

For others, it was just another routine, a change in the monotony that in the end meant nothing. Sure, there was energon. Yeah, company was in no short supply, even if it wasn’t always openly friendly. But at the end of the day, what did it really do for them? They still worked tedious jobs for next to nothing, they still went back to shelters and hideouts once that was done to recharge in cramped quarters. And best of all – ohhh, best of all! – they still sat at the bottom of the hierarchy, waiting ever so impatiently for the likes of Optimus Prime and Starscream and the others to figure out just what to do with Megatron so that they could THEN begin to try and patch up things with the neutrals who’d been left behind in the first place! What good did a bar really do, other than give everyone else a way to drown themselves in blissful ignorance for a while?

At least, that was how Overrun felt about it, finally overcharged off his rocker and loose enough to let it out. When he had finished with his outburst, he slumped down to the table again with a whimper, head thudding and bouncing once before coming to a stop, even as Crosspunch gave up on shushing him and winced at the impact. They now had the attention of some of the regulars in the immediate vicinity and it hadn’t been his intention to pull their looks over to this corner. Frankly, it was embarrassing, and he regretted his decision to even ask Overrun and coax it out of him why he’d been so unhappy.

Beside him, a rust colored mech blinked and shook his head. “Think you’re missing the point, Run.” He turned and pointed to a sign by the bar’s entrance, highlighted with a soft green, curved lighting. It was a plaque of the house rules that mostly went ignored, but got shoved by the owner himself into the faces of those who hadn’t the decency enough to be civil. Rotor didn’t play games with that type. “Didn’t you ever read those? This place just ain’t like that.”

Crosspunch raised a hand in a stilling gesture. It was a relief that the looks others were giving them were finally diminishing; he was in no hurry to see those back any time soon. “No, Wire, let him be. He’s too overcharged to know what he’s going on about, I’m sure.”

“I’m just saying.” The other mech shrugged and went back to his glass, mouth hanging at the edge for a moment in thought. “It just isn’t. And even if it was, you were the one who asked him. Why bother? He’s always like this.”

Crosspunch shifted in his seat, looking down at the gray and white mech slumped between them, face flattened against the table in a way that looked like it should be painful. Overrun probably didn’t feel a thing of it, but he might notice the scrapes tomorrow. Then again, with the rest of his armor kept the way it was... “Well, yeah, but look at him. He’s a mess. Has been for days. When have you ever seen him like this?”

Wire took another sip of his energon and shook his head. “He does reconstruction. Is it really so weird to see him with scratches and dents? Besides, this isn’t the first time.”

“So do you,” Crosspunch pinned his friend with a dubious look, “and I don’t recall ever seeing you look this bad. Won’t you at least pretend to be a little concerned?”

A hand raised in defeat, a sigh gusted from well worn vents. “Okay, look. Maybe I am. But he probably just had a rough day at work. You know how it is with this city, stuff falling apart all over. I’ll promise you this: tomorrow he’ll be different. He’ll wake up, feel like scrap, get himself a buff and be right back to his silently miserable self all over again. You’ll see.”

Crosspunch considered him, then nodded at last and finished his own glass. On the table, a small pool of energon that hadn’t gone the direction it was supposed to in Overrun’s intakes finally spilled over and began to collect in a little dribble under his cheek. The mech’s optics were closed and offlined, and Crosspunch assumed he had fallen into recharge. He turned back to the change in conversation Wire had taken to and thought nothing more on him for some time.

+++++

The way the world had shifted so suddenly was disorienting, but the numbness that had spread throughout Overrun’s frame from the intensity of the energon he had consumed made it difficult to care. He focused instead on his thoughts, what few and fleeting there were to be found. None of them were particularly pleasant, all running along the same threads that haunted him day in and out, but they moved like flashes of light, there long enough for him to think he had it and gone again before he could figure it out.

Through it all, there were voices speaking in the haze of space somewhere around him. Most were murmurs, unintelligible. Overrun wasn’t quite sure they were even voices at all. They could have been just the hum of the construction equipment he used, but that didn't make any sense either. Now and then, one rang out, sharp and clear – a shout or a laugh or a warning blip, he couldn’t tell which. Overlapping them were two other sounds - definitely voices - that seemed all at once familiar and strange. They spoke about him, he thought, because when he blinked he could barely make out an arm and the upper half of a blue torso turned toward him as the sounds continued. Overcharged logic dictated that if that was someone, and that someone was talking while turned toward him, then surely that someone must be speaking _to_ him.

Overrun blinked again, tried to understand what was said, found he couldn’t and ultimately closed his eyes and gave up. Most of it sounded like accusations anyway, nothing new to him. It was the same things he’d told himself time and time again. It hurt. Of course it hurt – the truth always did. But he was no less disillusioned than the mechs here, he felt. Or maybe he was. They all seemed so happy, or as happy as they could be anyway. They were all gathered here to get overcharged and laugh or gripe.

They were all fooling themselves. Overrun might have been unpleasant, but at least he was honest. They were the working class of the world now, and some of them, like him, always had been. He had done this dance before and it hadn't looked any brighter then than it did now. Their leaders and officers, they wanted to call this an improvement, this end to the war, this _compromise_. Overrun knew better. He knew better because he lived it. There were no heroes amongst them, no shining stars. The only ones who mattered down here were the ones who gave the orders, and even they wouldn’t be missed if they suddenly disappeared.

Like him. Less like him, because if he was gone, no one would bat an optic lid. No one would care. No one would notice.

That was when it hit him, square in the chest like the _Lost Light_ rebuilt in a physical manifestation of truth, come back around to bear on him with all of its harsh reality. He didn’t matter. Nothing he did mattered. If he vanished tomorrow, the world would keep drifting on without him and he wouldn’t even be noticed. His role would be filled by an eager other and that mech would go on and complete the redevelopment of Iacon without any idea whose pedes he was filling, and he would probably do a much better job of it. That mech would have friends who would laugh with him and complain with him when the work cycle ended and those few long, precious hours at The Pit Stop began.

It seemed, somewhere in the back of Overrun’s sloshed mind, that he had known this all already. Wasn’t it something he’d said once upon a time? Wasn’t it something he had said just a bit ago, or was that a long time ago? And then a bigger question. Why hadn’t he realized the full measure of its existence until now?

Maybe that was what The Pit Stop was really about – bringing the people to terms with actuality. Finally, Overrun understood. The bar really did have a purpose. It just had taken a lot of high grade energon after a particularly rough night for him to see it. Now that he knew what really was, he knew what he had to do.

A second stream of liquid forced its way out of Overrun’s faceplates, this time, through tense optic lids, to drip down to the uneven surface of the table, completely unnoticed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More plot in the works, more sad and unhappy. It's very much still developing as I write, but I think I'm starting to figure out where things are headed.
> 
> Also, sorry that it's been over a week since my last update! Work suddenly decided now would be a great time to boot me up to full time with mandatory overtime, so what little time I do have to write, I tend to be exhausted and not in the mood. Yaaaay.

Overrun had no memory of returning to his apartment when he woke the next cycle. There was only a vague recollection of the events that led to his eventual seat at the bar, a good deal of energon, some talking, a bit more energon, a little more talking. What happened beyond that came to him in bits and broken pieces amid a world of hurt radiating out from his processor and fuel tank. Stuck in between the two, Overrun found it to be quite a trial to try and calm both, so he settled for movement, hoping to shake the hold both had on him.

He groaned, tried to turn away from the gradual onlighting of the room’s sole source of illumination, and instantly regretted it as the contents of his tank rolled with him. Something there seemed to twitch, most disgruntled at having been repositioned so rudely, but did not threaten yet to find its way back out of him. Overrun reasoned with it that if he promised not to move again like that, would it just stay still with him and not try to find its horrid way out of his frame? Because that would just be unpleasant for everyone involved. It would? Okay. And though the sharp ache in the rest of him refused to subside, at least he and the energon creature in his fuel tank were on even terms once more.

So still, he did lie, letting his thoughts roam as he had the previous night. One in particular stuck with him, one odd and terrible. Although he had no knowing how he had come to such a disturbing conclusion, the emotions associated with it came back to him again and again. Sure, he was unhappy. What mech who’d even heard his name couldn’t figure that one out? But this curve ball came at him in the guise of his modus operandi, only that much more intense, and a large part of him had no problem with it. It didn’t horrify him, didn’t send him quailing back to his work or back to the bar or to the clinic down the street. It seemed like less of a good idea than it must have at the time, now that he had a clearer mind to consider it, but the longer he tried to stave it off and shove it back down into the depths from which it had come, the more Overrun thought he might not be rid of it so easily.

Or so willingly.

And that was scary in itself. A world without him? That wasn’t scary at all. But what about _him_? No one else might notice his absence, but he would. Oh, yes, he most certainly would. If he was gone, no one would miss him, and that was the least of his concerns, but on the other hand, if he was gone, what did that mean for him? What would it be like, to find death right at his doorstep? It would certainly hurt, he imagined, depending on how he chose to carry it out, but would he remember it after? Would he feel anything at all? More importantly, would his worries be more or fewer? Would there be that rumored peace at last within the Well waiting for him or would there just be nothing?

_Would the pain finally stop?_

He lie there, rolling the possibilities around in his head for some time, and concluded that maybe, just maybe, he’d made a little progress through all that high grade a night ago. He should be afraid, some meager part of him argued, that his mood had slipped to such a degree. The who and the why and the how hadn’t changed that much at all over the centuries of his life. Even before the war started, it cried, he had lived much the same. He had been squared away as a technical developer, never impressed anyone, never was expected to either. He hadn’t been thrilled with it, but a job was a job and he did what he had to to support the community. When his shift ended, he went to the local oil well and shared a bit of energon with names and faces now long gone, either swept away by the war or by the expansive reach of an endless universe. And never once, even then, had he considered just up and ending it all. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him.

But, Overrun objected, that was just the problem with the thing. Nothing changed. No one ever really changed. Not down here. He would be stuck where he was forever, just a nobody with no friends, no family. The mechs who knew him barely even knew his name and yet they all sat together at the same table, night after night, drinking the same order of energon while they spoke of the same things they always did. Not for his lack of trying, oh no! He’d been the one who’d approached Crosspunch and said hello. He’d put in the extra effort and the extra hours with this project or that, hoping against hope it would be seen by bosses and leaders who didn’t care for scrap except that the job got done or unless someone messed up. Where was he now? Right where he’d always been. It was a vicious cycle, and he wished he knew what deity had made up that equation, where everything or nothing all came out to be the same solution, because he had mind to give them his two creds about that one and they could keep the change, thank you very much.

The opposition’s advocate in him mulled on his argument for a minute and called for an intermission. Yesterday’s work had been hard on him, physically if nothing else, and high grade energon never made anyone the wiser. Didn’t there used to be a popular vidfeed on the subject? And look at all that missing paint. At least go get cleaned up and see what the day holds and they would revisit this later.

Overrun begrudgingly agreed, mood somewhat lightened now that the ache in his frame had begun to subside. He blinked and wondered just how long he’d been lying there, contemplating the end of his existence for that to have happened. He didn’t have time to think on it, as right then, he received a ping from an incoming comm feed. Immediately, he flinched as he recognized the source and immediately thereafter, he regretted it as his head and abdomen issued virulent complaints.

It was the reconstruction project manager come to inform that he was, by all definitions of the phrase, late to report.

+++++

Being a good employee had its perks, in many places. If there were opportunities to advance, staying in line sometimes meant getting that promotion or at least getting closer to it. It might have meant more responsibility, but hey, that was what gained one trust, and trust meant you were just one step closer to the next level on the hierarchy. For Overrun, those aspirations just didn’t exist, not because he didn’t hope to attain them – at one point in time long ago, at least – but because they just weren’t there. Doing what you were told and doing it well meant not getting any negative attention – it meant staying off the radar. There were no rewards, there was only job security.

He should have been grateful for that, he reminded himself as he raced down the streets, fliping into and out of his alt mode along the way to duck and dodge around others as he made his way toward the build site. He did what was expected of him and wasn’t seen as the broken link that needed to be removed as a result. How much worse off would he be if he couldn’t even hold that down? He tried not to think about it and kicked it up a notch, heading down the last stretch of road.

The place looked less of a dump than it had a few weeks ago, to be sure, but it still had a long ways to go, and it was always crawling with Cybertronians busting their gears trying to get it into shape. Overrun knew most of them by name, all of them by face, and said nothing to any of them as he hustled his way through the check point, then up a variety of ramps and ladders to his designated zone, checking the roster through a quick ping to see what were his tasks for the day.

That one, seemingly miniscule detail, the daily job line up, that was Overrun’s highlight. It was the one thing that never really stayed the same too long, the one consolation in his automated life. Each mech working the building had been assigned a group and each group would be designated a section to repair. Within their own sections, mechs were given different jobs to deal with, depending on what needed to be done, and those tended to be rotated out on an every other weekly basis or so, depending on how fast things were finished. The break in routine, just stirring it up even a little, Overrun loved it, but had no idea how much he really appreciated it. The fact that his job of the day was something he’d done countless times before meant little next to that it wouldn’t last long.

Once he got into the grind of it, the days normally didn’t seem to last long either. Not today. Today, Overrun operated under a cloud of worry that seemed to slow time to a crawl. He never came in late, and this was his only exception, but what if his project manager took exception to that anyway? Would he be reprimanded? Would it get him released from his duties?

Unknown to him amid his anxieties, the day passed without incident, without issue, without another notice from his manager. His shift came to a close after what seemed like ages, and he registered his exit with the attendance system once his end of the day tasks had been completed, all tools in their places, all remaining supplies accounted for. Per habit, as he wandered away from the site, his feet automatically started him in the direction of The Pit Stop, where most of his coworkers went by the day’s end anyway, but today, he paused. After everything that had happened between the night before and then with his unusual tardiness, all the fear that kicked up in him, he just didn’t have it in him to show his face in the bar that night.

With a sigh, Overrun turned and started in the direction of his apartment instead. What was the point of it anyway? He still had one last job to do, and for the first time in a long time, he felt a sense of relief flood him. Whatever happened next, he would be free, and all at once, that was all he cared about. Suddenly, it seemed so silly that he’d been so worried the whole day over being late. His manager hadn’t even said another word about it, and tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter! Not that it ever did, but it was better that way, he reasoned. No one to mourn him, no one to make him feel guilty about leaving behind. They would all be okay without him, and that was the best and the worst part about it.

He took a pause to run a survey with the objection and found it strangely silent. No arguments, no protests, just a nervous sort of acceptance. A small, sad smile crept across Overrun’s face. This was it, then. He hurried home, shouting in his mind in equal measures of sorrow and elation.

Behind him, having just left the site for the day himself, Wire raised a hand to call out and wave to his buddy, but stopped short when he realized Overrun wasn’t paying attention. A moment later, he shrugged and turned down the opposite road. The Pit Stop awaited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! I know I said work is busy as all, but hopefully the next chapter won't be so long in coming!

**Author's Note:**

> Update to come, hopefully soon. Comments and constructive criticisms welcome!


End file.
